How to start a voluntary carbon tax group.
It can be empowering and fun to make a carbon tax pledge with a group – your friends, colleagues, family – any group that shares your concern for reducing our carbon footprint. Advantages include
- mutual support for making the pledge and for paying attention to your carbon footprint
- greater financial impact by combining your contributions
- thinking together about ways to expand impact and to use pledged funds.
To pledge as a group, you’ll need someone (a “steward”) willing to collect and collate individual pledges. This steward may collect the funds so that one contribution can be made by the group. Alternately, individuals can make their own contributions, with the steward just collecting the information. To join our effort, the steward should fill out the Join us form on this website. This will enable us to send quarterly reminders to the steward, collecting information about the results of the group’s activity.
Each member of the group will need to make a pledge, either setting a specific amount to donate per period or using the pledge form on the sidebar or a modification of the group’s own devising. The steward will keep track of these pledges and each quarter will submit the information using the reporting form.
Quarterly reports and how we expect to use them
You may choose to calculate and pay your pledge monthly,quarterly or annually. We will update this website quarterly, and will email quarterly reminders toyour steward to submit your group’s report. Please include whatever amounts your group has donated since your last report. We will then include your information on this website, combining it the information from other individuals and groups. Your group may find it satisfying to keep a record of your participation and to know how well you have contributed to efforts to minimize carbon usage.
Please refer to the Individual Pledges page for suggestions for individuals and to some places that others have sent their tax for examples of how voluntary carbon taxes have been used.